


Her and You and All of It

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: Twitter Fic [21]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/F, Female Armitage Hux, Female Kylo Ren, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Violence, No Sex, Post-Canon, Rival Relationship, Roughhousing, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:01:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22346050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: "You'd see little bottles like that on the black market sometimes, split up from a larger one to maximize the profit."Kylo licks her palm, wet with wine. She raises her brow at the bottle. There's hardly a sip remaining now. Hux wants to drink it, just to defy her."Did you buy this from a criminal, Hux? Which of the cartels is still hiding a case?" Kylo puts her hand on Hux's and guides the bottle to her lips. "Should you be brought up for a court marshal?" She watches Hux for a moment, easing herself closer on the sofa. "Waste not, want not."
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Twitter Fic [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1115475
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Her and You and All of It

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this image.](https://twitter.com/archillect/status/1218382525191675904)
> 
> Please see end notes for spoilery warnings re: potential squick and character death.
> 
> This is kind of shit I guess, sorry.

"Supreme Leader."  
  
Hux sits on the low sofa in Kylo Ren's quarters. She is ram-rod straight, her feet arranged perfectly parallel and flat on the floor, her gloved hands folded precisely in her lap. It is the only way that she knows how to be: ever alert, ever on guard, ever the embodiment of the First Order. Her Order.

Kylo nods, expression wary, and crosses the room. She unclips the cape from her shoulders and swings it around in a fluid motion to settle it on the broad-shouldered dress-form in the corner. The trooper stationed at the door behaves as if neither exist. They are motionless and silent, blaster at the ready. Kylo scrutinizes Hux from where she stands, arms folded.

Hux can feel the tendrils of the Force that Kylo uses to read her thoughts, curling through conscious and subconscious mind-space alike. It's as familiar as a lover's touch and just as dangerous.  
  
"You're dismissed," Kylo finally commands.

The trooper turns and steps outside, door closing with a soft hiss behind them. They'll stay there, posted at the door, ready to give their life for the Supreme Leader at the slightest signal of distress. These new troopers are a curiosity to Hux, clad in glossy black and singularly driven. She wonders what Phasma would think. Would she approve? Would she embrace the rigorous new training regimen that the Knights of Ren have employed? Would she have survived the first wave of deactivations?

"Who let you in?" Kylo asks.  
  
"I let myself in."  
  
"I'll have to find out what squad was assigned to this wing."  
  
"They'll need more stringent training."  
  
"Have you come to kill me then? Claim your place?"  
  
"You're in my head, you know the answer to that."  
  
"Not the right time for it."  
  
"Not by far. We've -- _you_ \-- have only just crushed the Resistance. Galaxy isn't stable enough for an assassination."  
  
Kylo removes her belt and drapes it over the cape. Hux doesn't know how she's even standing. It is the height of the summer on the planet that the Order has made its home. The weather is sweltering, the humidity oppressive. Kylo has been outside for hours at the peak of the day, speaking to the galaxy from the lush desert-veg gardens and viewing the new craft that she has ordered to be built. And yet here she is, fresh and sweet-looking even in her layers of leather and the heavy drape of her cape. Hux had swooned in the first thirty minutes, excused herself to return to the shelter of her own quarters. She's accustomed to the carefully controlled habitat of a star destroyer. She supposes in some ways that it's made her soft. But she's not here to make apologies or ask forgiveness for whatever failing the Supreme Leader might perceive in it.  
  
Kylo looks at her expectantly, coming to halt just a few feet away. She towers above Hux this way and Hux cannot deny the gesture is effective.  
  
Hux indicates the bottle of priceless toniray in a chilled bucket on the side table. It had been difficult to procure and even more difficult to authenticate. Hux was sure that Kylo would appreciate the effort, her own love for the rare and extravagant not entirely secret. There were other reasons too, of course, but Hux trained them carefully from her mind.  
  
"I thought we might celebrate," she says. "A small gift to share, surely, in comparison to the grand scale of your achievement."  
  
Kylo purses her lips, unconvinced. She picks up the bottle and rends the cork from the mouth with her fingertips with an efficient twist. The fragrance of the wine fills the room and she passes the open bottle beneath her nose.  
  
"It's not poisoned," Hux assures.  
  
"Is this actually what it appears to be?"

"Of course. An imitation would be beneath us, beneath the occasion."  
  
The barest hint of a smile creeps across Kylo's full mouth. "Us." She's amused and Hux must squash down her own agitation.  
  
"Yes, _us_. Do you think that the Order would have followed you with so little consequence if not for me?"  
  
Eyes steady on Hux, Kylo places the rim of the bottle against her bottom lip. With purpose, she tips it and takes a long sip. "Yes."  
  
"Preposterous."  
  
Kylo laughs. "The Order's command is as fickle as the Republican senate. They do not simply respond to the snap of General Hux's fingers -- flagship or not. Snoke may have assigned me to the Finalizer but I wasn't without contact elsewhere. I would have been useless to him otherwise. Do you think I sat around and did nothing when I was not working some objective?"  
  
Hux swallows. It's not the time. Nor is it the time to let Kylo's ego get under her skin. "Of course, how very short sighted of me."

Hux thinks for a moment how things might have happened had she not found Kylo alive in the ruins of that temple so many years ago -- if perhaps one of the elder students had managed to cut her down with their dying breath. At least, that is what she would have told the Knights when they followed. Or, perhaps, what might have happened if she had left Kylo in the snow on Starkiller, bleeding and wheezing while the planet collapsed; nothing more than a fading blip on a radar screen as her tracker vaporized.  
  
Kylo must must taste the flavor of her thoughts. She snorts and takes another sip. Sitting down heavily -- more specifically, dropping her body like a stone from a great height -- she jostles Hux on the sofa. She sets the bottle on the floor between them and leans forward to remove the circlet from her brow. She rubs at the purpled ridge it leaves on her temples and forehead, keeping her fingers carefully away from the twisted, ugly scar that bisects her face. Hux has always wondered why, with Snoke and all of his orders and expectations gone, she has never sought out correction? Hux thinks of the way that Mitaka shivers when Kylo speaks on the bridge and supposes there must be something to it. She watches Kylo flex her jaw and roll her neck, watches the way the thickest parts of the scar on her cheek and throat stretch and twist. She wants to touch it and banishes the notion.  
  
"Dont you have glasses?" She asks instead. Hux ignores that the bottle has been so purposefully set on the ground rather than the low table in front of the couch. Just a little dig. A less than subtle message.

Kylo puts the tip of her middle finger between her teeth and pulls to release her hand from its glove. "I thought this was a gift for your Supreme Leader."

One brow shoots skyward and Hux believes for a moment that she's serious, that she has no intention to share. She waves a hand vaguely at the side table and the cabinet beneath sides open. Hux can almost feel her desire to float them across the room, but she doesn't. She gives Hux an expectant look and removes her second glove.  
  
The second doesn't give as easy. Out of some archaic sense of respect for privacy or supremacy, Hux turns away and goes to retrieve the glasses. She can hear Kylo flexing her fingers again and again, twisting the wrist.  
  
"Always amazing," she mumbles. "Son of a kriffing bitch."  
  
"Phantom pain?" Hux asks with her back turned. Kylo makes a sound of confirmation, a grunt with a positive kind of pitch. When Hux turns to look she is shaking out her hair and scratching her scalp with both hands, eyelashes fluttering in relief. "Fascinating, I think. The inefficiencies of the brain."  
  
"Annoying," Kylo grumbles.

Hux sits and places the glasses down, the delicate crystal of the stemless cups practically begging to be filled with such a special substance. Kylo puts her foot up on the edge of the table, pushing it away and making the glasses rattle in the process. She begins to unstrap her boot.

"Pour."

Hux reaches out for the bottle and hesitates. Cringing as first one heavy boot hits the floor and then the other, she removes her gloves and sets them neatly on the table. Kylo flings her arms out across the back of the sofa. It makes Hux's hackles raise to watch her slouch and droop, her knees spread wide and one foot balanced just-so on the edge of the table. The toes curl against the surface. The sock looks ever so slightly damp.  
  
"They're not the right glasses, of course. But even my mother couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a proper toniray flute."  
  
Hux nods. It is always slightly bizarre to hear Kylo mention her parents, her life before she was Kylo Ren. Especially now -- the Supreme Leader had become something of a mythical figure. Born of blood and ash and the Force. Kylo accepts a glass and flops back again, settling in. She breathes over the rim, her nose poking into it, and watches Hux sip.  
  
Hux has never tasted toniray before, not even the imitation produced by Alderaanians on Birren. The effervescence is startling, the flavor sweet and smooth. She can imagine very easily getting completely smashed on the stuff at some royal party while the Queen and the Viceroy presided over it all.

Hux freezes at a sharp tug on her hair. Kylo's mechanical fingers hook into the elastic tie at the nape of neck and pull it down. The weight of her hair breaks the sweat-compromised layer of pomade and it swings forward in unseemly chunks, the short length of it tickling her chin.  
  
"Doesn't celebration imply that we're going to relax?"  
  
Hux can't look at Kylo, too offended by the presumptuousness of her familiarity.  
  
"If you stopped sitting up so straight, would you fall apart?"  
  
"No, Supreme Leader."  
  
"It's funny, you think you're so terribly high on the food chain, but you can't even call me Ren anymore."

In the extreme corner of her peripheral vision, Hux can sense the movement of Kylo's hand lifting her glass, the soft teal of the wine like a chromatic aberration as it flows toward her mouth. Hux tucks her hair behind her ears and sips again, trying to enjoy the desperately rare treat. Kylo's glass clinks against the table as she places it down. The cushion shifts. Like an overgrown child, she stretches Hux's hair tie between her thumbs and launches it across the room. It _plinks!_ against the door and falls.  
  
"Take your shoes off," the Supreme Leader orders.

"Excuse me?"  
  
"Take them off. Or are you afraid I'll see the knife you carry?"  
  
Hux raises a hand and flicks her wrist. A thin blade drops from inside of her sleeve from the device strapped to her forearm and she takes just a few seconds to sheath and hide it once more. "Ive moved it."  
  
Kylo purses her lips, eyes shining with amusement. "Off."

Hux puts her glass down and obliges, lining her boots up beside the table. She flexes her toes, relieved, although she won't say it. As she moves to pick the glass back up, Kylo speaks.  
  
"Socks, now."  
  
Hux takes a deep breath and abandons her glass again. First one and then the other, she unsnaps the closure of her jodhpurs around her calves and rolls her socks down to remove them. She folds them together and drapes them over the rim of one boot. She's not entirely sure what game Kylo is playing but she knows its about power. It always is. Hux can appreciate the sentiment, even if she is the object for the moment.  
  
"What exactly are we celebrating, again?"  
  
"You, the Order. Your achievement." It's like vinegar on Hux's tongue, sour and hot. She makes a grand, sweeping motion with one arm as if to indicate the room and everything in the galaxy beyond it, then leans in conspiratorially and Kylo humors the gesture. "Empress."  
  
Kylo laughs. Hux swallows down her pride, resists the urge to spit in her face.  
  
"I don't want to be _empress_ , I never have. It's not about ruling, Hux. Not for me. It's about _not being ruled_. Empress has a certain connotation, doesn't it? Snoke had the right idea with his styling, even if he didn't know it. Supreme Leader has a very specific flavor."  
  
Kylo's face contorts suddenly, screwing up like she's heading head first into a storm on Tatooine.  
  
"Excuse me," she croaks and rises. "Please, don't stop on my account."

She waves vaguely at the wine and slumps into the hall, disappearing behind the refresher door and hissing as she goes. Hux does take a moment to savor the toniray in peace, replacing it with a polite quantity from the bottle. She can hear the water running in the refresher and Kylo speaking softly in a language Hux doesn't recognize -- although by the tone she suspects they are not kind words. Kylo returns looking damp, her hair stuck in curled tendril on her forehead. When she sits down, she polishes the wine in her glass off in a single large swallow. She reaches out for the bottle and serves herself. When she looks up, lips parted to say something that never quite makes it off her tongue, Hux gasps.  
  
Her eye -- nestled into the lumpy scar across her face -- is disfigured. The warm, brown iris is collapsed in a manner that makes the clouded, silvery lens beneath appear as a double pupil. The white is discolored, dull, and the vessels in it broken and disturbingly brownish like old stains.  
  
"What?" Kylo barks, a deep frown creasing her brow and turning her full mouth ugly.  
  
"I apologize, Supreme Leader, it's just a bit shocking." Hux reaches out and stops. She touches her own cheek, at a loss for articulation.

Kylo's expression morphs at dizzying speed. "You've never seen it, have you?" Her cheeks flush just for a moment and the color drains again. "Come to think, probably only Snoke ever had. Snoke and the EmDee, I suppose."  
  
Kylo lifts a finger to the eye as if to touch it directly. Hux squirms. She snorts and merely rubs it instead.  
  
Is it completely dead? Hux wonders. Why hadn't she had it enucleated? Replaced? What folly?  
  
"I can see a bit -- shadows, shifting." Kylo answers her thoughts. "Contact lens doesn't do anything more than hide it. Effective though, hm?"

Kylo's face drops into a frighteningly neutral expression. She leans in close, forcing Hux to confront the magnitude of the damage to her face -- what the scavenger had done that day on Starkiller -- what Snoke had forced her to endure. Hux's head fills with sensation and it blooms violently across her skin. From the surface, it twists down into her muscles and tendons, it makes her bones ache. Pain flares like fire across her face -- her neck -- her shoulder -- it crawls up and down her spine and seizes her gut. Her vision blurs and resettles. The room spins and she thinks she might vomit. She has a manic, ridiculous thought that it would be such a shame to waste the toniray that way.  
  
"Are you disturbed, General?"  
  
All at once the pain recedes and Hux slumps toward Kylo unwittingly. She's breathing hard, nearly snorting as she draws air in through her nose and pushes it out through her teeth. Spittle flies toward Kylo's chest and lands bright and white against the folds of her leather gorget.  
  
"Will it make you happy if I am?"  
  
"What would make _you_ happy, Hux?" Kylo gently pushes her away, fingers lingering on her elbow, just barely pinching. "What would make you finally relax?"  
  
Hux struggles to put any sort of thought together coherently.  
  
"Sometimes I forget. Nothing makes you happy and you've got no idea what relaxing is."  
  
Kylo stretches and yawns and sips her wine. This is such a strange little party. Really, _what_ in all the stars had Hux been thinking? She should have simply delivered the wine and left. She has nothing to say to Kylo Ren, nor the other way around. When had they ever carried on any sort of conversation that lasted more than a few forced pleasantries outside of strict business? This had been a perfectly insane attempt to -- to -- Hux wasn't even sure what the fuck she'd been trying to do anymore.

"We should have picked a more temperate world for all this." Kylo mumbles off-hand, like nothing had happened between that moment and when she had first removed her cape. She rolls her neck and pulls at the gorget, scratching at the scarred skin just under the collar.

"The new fleet will be complete soon. There won't be anything pressing to hold command here any longer." The idea of getting back on the Finalizer and leaving this system is tantalizing. The Resistance may be gone but it didn't mean that the galaxy had simply bowed to the will of the Order. There were still systems to bring in line, seeds of opposition to ground out. It would be good for everyone to be on the move again.  
  
"So eager to get away from me," Kylo says and Hux can feel that she's been seen, that Kylo has never left her head. Something in her skull wiggles like a tongue and Hux flushes from her hairline into her throat. "You left so soon, I wanted to show you your new ship."  
  
"I have the Finalizer."  
  
"Not any more."  
  
"What do you mean not any more?"  
  
"Don't be purposefully dense, it's unbecoming."

As she speaks, Kylo reaches beneath her arm and releases the zip on her tunic. She lets go of a heavy sigh and lifts the thing over her head. The sudden, musky scent of her is unpleasantly attractive, like the special operations pilots when they work for hours under the belly of a fighter or Phasma when she returned from battle. The tunic collapses in a heap on the floor and Kylo tugs at the closure on the gorget. Her skin is pink and moist beneath it all, the hollow of her throat shining. She wasn't mystically immune then after all, simply better disciplined than Hux ever could have imagined. Hux swallows jealousy along with the wine.  
  
Kylo's chest heaves, straining at the damp garment she's still wearing.

The polished metal of the mechanics fitted into her shoulder are sleek and efficient. It was too long, Hux remembers, between the injury and when they had finally reached the rendezvous point with the Finalizer in their little escape shuttle. They hadn't been able to to evoke any kind of tactile response from the cold, pale hand that once had been there. Kylo had been near-delirious, decisions had to be made quickly. Hux contacted Snoke as soon as they docked and without hesitation Kylo's master had instructed them to stop wasting time and remove the limb. Kylo wasn't useful if she were in a bacta tank or languishing in an infirmary to heal and retrain the limb. He wanted her at the coordinates he'd transmitted, aboard his personal craft, to complete her training _post-haste_.  
  
Kylo had barely reacted when she came out of sedation. She was more concerned for the wound in her side then the loss of her arm, asking wryly if Hux had remembered to pick up all of her guts from the snow.  
  
That wound had healed much better than her face, at least. The flesh was thick and discolored where the synthskin had been grafted on, but it was uniform -- mercifully forgettable.  
  
Kylo drinks deeply and fills her glass again. She rests the mechanical hand against her stomach as she lounges, one foot fully up on the table.  
  
"Do you intend to completely disrobe?" Hux asks, the absurdity of it all dawning on her.  
  
"Would you like me to?"  
  
Hux bites back a retort and sips.  
  
"You still haven't told me your intentions here. And I can't quite find them on my own." Kylo taps the side of her head with her glass. "You can look, you know. You want to. Gawk. See all that I have given to the Order. So much of myself." She gives Hux a hard look. "What have _you_ ever given? Life and limb? Like I have?"  
  
"The Order is my life."  
  
"Yes, you were born into it. You've never had to make a choice."

Kylo talks as if she's remarking on the weather again. She crosses the elevated foot over her knee and pulls the sock off, then the other, before relaxing again. It's strange how she sheds. There's a restless quality to it, nearly nonsensical in pattern like she would peel her skin off if she could but she's settling for the tiny satisfaction of removing random clothes.

"Tell me, Hux," Kylo scrutinizes her for several heartbeats. "Have you ever had anything to lose? Truly? Have you ever had to give something precious up? Have you ever faced a point of no return?"  
  
Hux takes a deep breath and begins to answer.  
  
"Or have you simply fallen in conveniently placed piles of shit your entire life?"  
  
It's happening before Hux realizes it's happening. Someone else has shoved her wine glass back onto the table. Someone else has tipped it over. Someone else's hand has lifted, arm swinging back and forward again.  
  
It's Hux's palm that makes contact with Kylo's cheek. Hux's that stings.  
  
Kylo's eyes grow wide. Her mouth hangs open in shock. She touches her cheek -- the bright red imprint of Hux's hand on her moon-pale, perfect, unmarked flesh. The glass in her hand is miraculously unbroken, although there is vibrant wine splashed carelessly against the white wall behind the sofa. Hux's foot slides against the floor, a teal puddle dripping steadily from the table.  
  
With an alarming measure of calmness, Kylo puts the glass aside. She is suddenly on Hux, big hands grabbing the front of her jacket and hauling her forward.  
  
"Who do you think you are?" Kylo spits, her nose nearly touching Hux's.  
  
"Who do I think I am?" Hux snarls back, gripping Kylo's wrists in futility. "Me?" She lashes out, grabbing at the back of Kylo's head and seizing a thick hank of hair and pulling as hard as she can. "I am the youngest general the Order has ever seen -- I am the commander of her flagship -- I took what I wanted at any and all cost --" She grabs at the ruined side of Kylo's face, nails biting into her cheek. "And _you_ owe _me_ your life."

It doesn't take much for Kylo's hands to shift around Hux's throat and she desperately yanks at Kylo's hair to dislodge her. What a foolish thing, she thinks, to have done what she has. She should cut off the offending hand, clearly it's been possessed by some entity that means her harm.

The table slides across the floor of its own accord, the bottle and glasses curiously upright. The circlet, long forgotten, skitters across the surface as the table glides, hitting the floor with a heavy clank and swinging in a lazy ark on its circumference like a coin escaped from a counter.  
  
Their bodies lurch, tipped by the wrenching of Kylo's hips and shoulders. The impact against the floor punches the air from Hux's chest and she sees stars, unable to draw more breath under the weight of Kylo's hands.  
  
" _How_ do I owe you my life? Because you followed orders like a _good_ little soldier? Just as always, just as ever."

As Kylo snarls, the door flies open on its track. The trooper posted there steps inside, blaster drawn and primed. Kylo flings a hand out and they fly backward, smacking against the opposite wall. The blaster goes off, charge bouncing off the floor and hitting the sofa. The door slams shut and the room fills with the scent of singed foam.

"Or because you didn't have enough of a spine to shoot me in Snoke's throne room?"

This close, the full measure of Kylo's face is terrifying. Not just the uncomfortable confrontation of her scar, her blind eye, but the fury that's blazing even behind the clouded lens. Hux's heart hammers itself silly against her sternum and she resolves that she will not disgrace herself with a futile fight. She closes her eyes, vision growing hazy, and suddenly there is altogether entirely too much air. Hux gags and retches as her lungs fill and her diaphragm seizes.

"Can't even do it now! Not even when your life is on the line and you'd got a kriffing knife in your sleeve," Kylo shouts in her face and rises up onto her knees, straddling Hux's middle.

She's careless of the hair that Hux rips from her head when she does, hardly an expression discomfort to offer for the effort it takes Hux to keep holding on. The weight of her makes it hard to breathe still, but at least Hux's head is swimming because she _can_ rather than not.

"At least the scavenger fought! Even with my saber in her gut she _tried_. With her last fucking breath. And _you,_ " Kylo pokes Hux hard in the chest to make her point. "You're useless. Nothing more than a sniveling sycophant. You say you want power. You want to lead. That you _are_ the Order," to Hux's shocked face she continues. "Yes, of course I've heard you -- it's impossible not to. Even when you're not speaking out loud you're thinking it _all the time_. You don't really want it. It's too difficult to bear the burden of it. You only want to be the neck that turns the head. You want to play games and hide while everyone else is actually _doing_ something -- your little pantomime of supremacy while you stop up and down the bridge."

Hux has had enough. Kylo Ren will never understand what it is to be who she is -- a child of Arkanis, of the Empire, of Brendol. She will never appreciate the brilliance of Hux's machinations within the Order, maneuvering for as long as she has memory to gain and maintain her position. Kylo will never understand the danger of standing on a bridge and calling yourself _General_ when half of an entire command structure wishes you dead. Who is Kylo Ren? Who is she but frightening mask worn by a weak, frightened girl?

Hux flicks her wrist and the blade in her sleeve slips free, completely unsheathing from the device. The handle falls neatly into her palm and she lashes out with the thin, sharp thing. She cries out and drops the blade just as quickly. Her head is filled with the static of a thousand back-channel holos, screaming with it and feeling fit to explode. Her fingers grow hot in a flash, hand engulfed in invisible fire. Kylo's grip on her wrist is crushing. Pain lances through her arm and into her elbow, speeding along the nerves.

Choking was more agreeable.

Kylo laughs even as cherry-red blood blooms in a hair-thin line across her bicep and chest. "Couldn't do it without being told to, could you? Needed permission."

She heaves her body upward and Hux curls in on herself, still gasping and swallowing desperately. Kylo picks up the blade as she lopes across the floor. She smacks her hand against the door release and chucks it outside. Hux just catches a glimpse of the trooper still crumpled there in the hall -- breathing still, good for them, only knocked out by the mishandling. Hux has manged to haul herself onto her knees when Kylo stands over her and tells her to get up. She sounds put out, put upon. Hux watches her feet for a moment when they come into the edge of her view. The shadow over her shifts when Kylo sticks a hand out to assist Hux, repeating herself more sternly.

Hux reaches out and grabs the hem of Kylo's pant leg and pulls. With a gasp of surprise, Kylo plummets. The floor shakes as she hit it. The bottle rattles on the table. The circlet makes a grinding sound against the floor as it's knocked away. Kylo swears and coughs and Hux crawls back to the sofa, pulling herself up onto the seat.

"If I am _so_ useless," Hux wheezes, "Why don't you just fucking kill me already, hm? Hypocrite."

Kylo groans and rolls onto her side and shifts herself to sit upright. She pushes her hair out of her face and frowns down at the flakey blood already dried on her skin. "Because I keep foolishly hoping you'll prove me wrong." She twists back and grabs the toniray, drinking from the bottle again. "Look," she croaks and gestures to the puddle on the floor and the stain on the wall, "you've wasted it."

Hux's throat _hurts_. It's not the first time she's been choked by physical mystical force, the Academy and Snoke made sure of that. But, _stars_ , it's been a while -- and she's having trouble seeing more than that. She watches Kylo drag herself closer on her knees. Kylo rises, putting an elbow against the sofa to heft herself up and squawks in indignation at the foot Hux shoves squarely in her gut. Panting, she sits back on the floor.

Cautiously, Hux draws her foot back. Kylo catches her toes, pinching hard just where they meet the ball of her foot and making the joint ache. "I think I like this version of you," she says. "More action, less talking. Maybe you'll finally earn the promotion you keep chasing."

"You're never going to promote me." Hux's voice is hardly a rasp, slicing up the inside of her throat in a long drag. "No matter what I do."

Kylo grins and lifts the toniray to her lips. Hux jerks her foot, trying to free herself. She jars the bottle with the attempt. Teal droplets cling to Kylo's chin and fall from her lips onto Hux's imprisoned foot. Kylo looks down, just a flick of her eyes under her thick lashes. With her thumb, her grip careful, she smears the wine across Hux's skin. "You've got nice toes, you know," she says. "Very straight. Taken care of."

Hux jerks her foot back sharply, stealing it from Kylo's grasp. She puts it down, unfortunately, in the half-dry puddle from her spilled glass. She suppresses the cringe she feels creeping across her face. Kylo licks her fingers, holding the bottle out to Hux expectantly.

"You're right, though, I'm never going to promote you." Hux clenches her teeth so hard they squeak inside her head. She snatches the bottle from Kylo's hand and chugs a heavy mouthful. "You're useful to me where you are. If I promote you, it defeats your purpose."

"And what purpose is that?" Hux's voice cracks, the wine's bubbly body burns.

"You're in the middle of things. High enough to command, low enough to be commanded. Right in the middle -- perfect to collect information, keep an ear to the ground. You're important enough to attend command meetings and carry out major maneuvers... but lowly enough that the top brass care little enough about you that they don't censor themselves."

Hux tries to push aside the obvious insult to see how right Kylo really is. "And don't you think that our relationship is telling?"

Kylo barks a laugh and looks down at at awkward angle, picking at the thin, flaky scab across her chest. "What relationship?"

"We worked side-by-side for five years under Snoke. You've continued to keep me close after -- "

"We actively antagonized and undermined each other for five years under Snoke and I've treated you as my errand-errand girl for five more. No one thinks you're reporting anything of value to me."

"How can you possibly know that?"

Kylo casts her a look like a moody teenager who has just pointed out something incredibly obvious. Hux rolls her eyes. Of course. She has grown so accustomed to the invasion of her mind -- gentle, forceful, cautious, strategic -- she forgets that there is use for it beyond the walls of her own skull. Hux lifts her sticky foot and places it squarely against Kylo's breast, pushing her toes into the soft flesh. The fabric of her undergarment is surprisingly rough, not at all like the smooth, comfortable thing Hux sometimes bothers to put on. Kylo's expression is caught between outrage and interest. She doesn't move.

"And what if I stopped tolerating it?" Hux wonders aloud in a froggy whisper. "What would they think then?"

"That you've lost your karking mind?" She slides closer on the floor, the leather of her leggings easing the transition. It makes Hux bend her knee close -- makes her toes press more firmly. She starts to move it, very aware of the slow way that Kylo is easing toward her. Kylo grabs at Hux's calf, fingertips digging into the meat of it, and holds her foot where it is.

"I wonder, Supreme Leader," Hux tires to change the subject. "Where your specially trained guards are? We can't have been quiet -- one of them has been harmed. Perhaps they all need a round of strict reconditioning."

"No they don't." Kylo taps the side of her head, smug. Her lips don't move but Hux distinctly hears her spit the word _obstinate,_ clear as the sky is blue. "Tell me, Hux," she breathes. "How would you demonstrate your intolerance?" She watches Hux sip, the play for time not lost. She puts out a demanding hand. "Give that to me." Hux hesitates. "Was it not a gift after all? Or was it contingent upon getting whatever the fuck you came here for?" She punctuates her thought with a little stab of her open hand through the air.

"My apologies, _Kylo_." The Supreme Leader smiles with a predatory glint from her place below Hux. "You're absolutely right. How selfish of me. It's such a desperately rare treat -- and look, there's not much left. You should have it."

Hux points her toes, digging them in. Kylo hardly reacts. She leans forward, holding the bottle out, and tips it. The Alderaanian delicacy spills from the bottle and runs over her shin, rivulets flowing toward her foot. It soaks into the fabric of Kylo's bra and pools in the spaces between her toes.

"How clumsy of me," Hux whispers.

Kylo laughs silently, a breathy sound rather than a vocalization. Her face is painted with amusement. It makes her somehow less and exponentially more terrifying. Carefully, she curves her body around Hux's foot and lifts it. Eyes on Hux, she leans forward and closes her mouth around Hux's smaller toes. She slurps showily and her tongue pokes between the digits.

Hux feels her face turn hot. She straightens her back and inclines her chin so she might look down her nose.

Kylo moves Hux's foot, licking and sucking and her toes and the wine. She shifts up onto her knees so that she might more easily lick the length of Hux's shin with the full flat of her wet tongue. She scrapes with her teeth and leaves a bright pink mark on the meat of Hux's calf with her lips. She looks up at Hux with a lopsided smile, every bit of the Supreme Leader gone from her countenance.

"If my mother had a grave she'd be rolling in it. We had some of this once, when I was very young. She let me have a little -- watered down -- told me all about how precious it was. Not because of what it was, but because of who it came from -- why it was so rare. The bottle was so small," Kylo laughs. "Just barely a glass for her and my father each. Evidently my aunt -- you remember Vice Admiral Holdo -- had gone through a great deal of trouble to get it. Refused to tell her source. I always thought later on that she'd probably gotten it from one of the cartels. You'd see little bottles like that on the black market sometimes, split up from a larger one to maximize the profit."

The comment takes Hux by surprise. Kylo shifts Hux's leg from one hand to the other, holding onto her heel. She licks her palm, wet with wine. She raises her brow at the bottle. There's hardly a sip remaining now. Hux wants to drink it, just to defy her. Kylo sets Hux's foot on the floor, very purposefully in the now-tacky spill, and pulls herself up onto the sofa.

"Did you buy this from a criminal, Hux? Which of the cartels is still hiding a case?" Kylo puts her hand on Hux's and guides the bottle to her lips. "Should you be brought up for a court marshal?" She watches Hux for a moment, easing herself closer on the sofa. "Waste not, want not."

Hux tips the last of the toniray into her mouth and holds it there, absurdly afraid to swallow. Kylo crowds her against the sofa's arm. Her touch is so gentle on Hux's face, it's startling. She holds Hux's skull in her hands and presses their lips together, teasing Hux's open and stealing the treat right from her tongue.

"Thank you," Kylo whispers. "For this wonderful gift."

**Author's Note:**

> Potential squick: Hux does a very sacrileg kind of thing and makes Kylo lick Alderaanian wine off of her feet/legs. It's not really fetishy, but I know some people are super not into feet. Hux is under the impression that this is humiliating or somehow putting Kylo in her place and Kylo is just very chill about the whole thing. Additionally, the most minor blood/injury situation ever, like essentially a large paper cut.
> 
> Character death: Kylo references that both Leia and Rey have been killed in the course of her ascent to ruling the galaxy. Doesn't go into gruesome detail but it's there.
> 
> I love comments, thanks.


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